Head and Heart
by blood red youth
Summary: An awkward discussion. Unrequited Arra/Mika, pre-book.


It had been years since his realization. He'd known right from the start that she wasn't like all the other human girls. He still remembered the glint of her grey eyes in the moonlight when he pressed their fingertips together the first time, an obscure consummation.

"You can't. I won't allow it, Arra."

Had he been in any clearer state of mind, Mika Ver Leth would have known that forbidding his assistant from doing anything was futile – and ill-advised. But all he could see was that she was slipping away from him far quicker than he could have expected, and he couldn't allow her to just disappear after so many years. Fully blooding her had been his biggest mistake, he supposed – if he had just kept her a half-vampire just _a little_ longer, she would have had no option but to be tied to him. It sounded so painfully selfish, and he knew that her happiness was in theory the most important thing, but he just couldn't lose her – not yet.

There was a heavy beat of silence. They had argued so much that her throat ached, and the idea of raising her voice made her strained vocal chords scratch. She cleared her throat. "Why?" she asked softly, and sat down across from him. She had paced back and forth for hours, her anger animated as ever, and Mika had sat like a rock, unmoving and unmoved by her pleas and her reasoning.

"You aren't ready," her mentor told her calmly, but his eyes told another story. "You are only just a full vampire. You aren't ready to be on your own."

Arra rubbed her temples wearily. "But I won't be on my own," she reminded him gently. "I'll be with Gavner and Larten. It's not the same at all."

Mika flinched visibly. _Larten_.

Weary as she was, Arra hadn't missed such a reaction. Though the anger flared again inside her, she knew from years of experience – and from the hours they had spent today getting nowhere – that her fiery temper got her nowhere with her stubborn mentor. She reached out to put a hand on his thick forearm, and he flinched at that as well, as though everything she did and said was a knife in his back.

"Why does it make you so angry?" Arra asked quietly. It was getting so late that other vampires were starting to file into the hall hoping for breakfast. They had begun talking at dawn, and wasted the whole day being unable to reach an agreement.

"I am sorry that you are stuck here because of my investiture, Arra," Mika said. "I realize it must be difficult for you, and had I been a new full vampire trapped within these walls, I would not have enjoyed it much either. But that does not change that you are still my assistant. You yourself have agreed that you are not ready to be without guidance."

"That wasn't what I asked you," she pointed out. Her legs were sore from standing all day and she rubbed her hands against her things to warm the muscles. She had training today with Vanez, and he wouldn't go easy on her for having no sleep. "And even if it was, it was years ago I told you I wasn't ready to leave. Maybe things have changed since then. You know how hard I've worked, Mika. It's an insult that you think, after all these years and all I've done, that I'm still sub-standard. I battled this attitude from the other vampires, but I hadn't expected it from you – _you_ blooded me! Why did you do it if you thought I'd never be good enough?"

"It isn't that," Mika interjected, and it really wasn't. She would probably never be quite as physically strong as her male peers, but she was faster, more determined, and largely more intelligent. He'd fought her himself and lost to her superior strategy.

"You say that," she spat, and her grey eyes – so clear, so beautiful in the moonlight sometimes – were stormy and cold when he met them with his own. "But it is that, isn't it? It has taken me _years_ for the others not to _laugh_ when I attempt a fight. I always thought at least you and Vanez could respect me, Mika, even if nobody else would, but you _don't_. You think me incapable and so you keep me here training endlessly, but you will never think I'm ready, no matter how many others I defeat or how many times I prove to you that I am!"

"Arra," Mika growled. "_It isn't that at all._"

"Well, what is it, then?" She cried, frustrated again, and as unable as she ever was to control her temper. Groups of vampires were milling around, and it wouldn't do for a soon-to-be Prince to be left without a name by his young assistant over breakfast. "Vanez says it's just natural, that you're just protective, but it's _clearly_ more than that – you only have to look at how easily Paris and Seba have let go of their assistants to see that this goes past concern. And you say I'm wrong when I say that it's because you think I'm not strong enough, and Larten can't be right about it, so why don't _you _just tell me why?"

Mika bristled again, and let out a sarcastic chuckle. "Oh, how entertaining," he sneered. "Do tell me what _Larten_ thinks, Arra, as he is so clearly an _expert_ on our situation."

Arra's eyes narrowed at his tone – she had never understood why two men as similar as Larten and Mika couldn't get along, both so stubborn and so noble. But Mika did not miss the subtle way her cheeks flushed, just slightly. Her dusky skin (so unblemished, he thought, and such an unusual colour contrasted with her pale eyes) prevented her from blushing often, but just this once it seemed even her colouring couldn't prevent it. "Well, what Larten thinks isn't important," she said quickly. "It's clear you don't respect his opinion anyway, so we needn't dwell on it."

"No, no," Mika said, watching over her shoulder as Crepsley, bane of his existence, entered the Hall in a group of other young vampires. He hoped the intensely irritating boy wouldn't stick his nose into their conversation at any point, though he'd clearly already been filling Arra's head with things about her mentor. He tactfully chose not to tell his assistant that her ridiculously orange-haired comrade was bumbling about a few benches away. "Come on, Arra, tell me – what does this Crepsley boy think?"

She coughed uncomfortably. "Just tell me yourself what it is and we can avoid talking about Larten at all, if it bothers you so immensely."

"I'd like to know his opinion. It would amuse me greatly."

"Mika…"

When he ignored her plea, she rubbed her hands together awkwardly, and untied her hair (he couldn't help but notice how it fell in beautiful waves when she set it loose, shiny and coal black), crossing and re-crossing her legs. "I told you, it isn't important," she began, adjusting the collar of her shirt. "And he isn't right either, I'm sorry I ever so much as brought it up. But Larten says you –" she broke off, and gave an uncomfortable little laugh, smiling and rolling her eyes as though the concept was so ridiculous. "Larten thinks you have _feelings_ for me. I know it's ridiculous, that's why I hadn't wanted to tell you. And you _are_ right, I suppose, that Larten doesn't know you and he hasn't known _us_ very long, so how would he know?"

Mika's blood ran cold. He supposed deep down he had probably sub-consciously expected Larten Crepsley, frustratingly perceptive as the arrogant cub was, to have figured him out. Or, indeed, perhaps Larten had recognized his own affections for her reflected in Mika's own actions. Casting his obsidian eyes over to Larten's seat, he wasn't surprised to see Larten watching their conversation – watching Arra, rather – and their eyes met briefly while Mika considered his response.

The raven-haired General took a deep, shuddering breath and hung his head.

"Mika?" Arra asked softly, and her hand on his arm that had remained throughout their argument, slipped back onto the table.

"I suppose," Mika said awkwardly, clearing his throat and clenching his fists. "that just this once, I could concede that Larten has got something right."

The silence that followed was almost unbearable.

"And that's why I'd rather you didn't leave just yet, Arra," Mika continued, his eyes shut so as not to witness her expression – he could predict it, anyway, a mixture of surprise and repulsion – and as if to block out his own loss of composure. "And why I _especially _would rather you didn't leave with Larten, because I just think if you were to consider it, you might realize how much we've been through together, and how it might not be so unbearable to, er, consider a few more years here, with me."

"Mika…" his assistant said softly, and he opened his eyes to find her own turned down towards the table. "How long has this been the case?"

He took another shaky breath. There was nothing to lose now that she knew. "All along, Arra," he admitted, and saying it felt like a weight lifted off his shoulders. "But I always knew the way I felt was inappropriate, and I thought when I blooded you the first time that I'd have to hide it at least until you were older, but now perhaps that you're a full vampire –"

"-When you blooded me?" Arra asked quietly, and leaned back further away from him. "When you blooded me the first time?"

Mika swallowed. "Well, yes," he said, and ran a hand over the back of his neck in embarrassment.

Half of him had hoped she would chastise him for waiting so long, and reveal that she felt the same way. That half of him, of course, had been wrong. She bristled, and her lips transformed into a thin, cross line. "So that was why you blooded me, then," she concluded, and met his eyes – and though before they had looked cold, now they looked positively distant, as though she was seeing him for the first time. "It wasn't that you thought I could make a good vampire. You still don't think that."

"I do think that," Mika told her desperately, but when he reached a hand across the table to touch her she recoiled and stood.

"I didn't realize-" Arra said, and broke off when her voice cracked. It almost ripped Mika's heart apart to see that he had upset her. She was so proud, and so sensitive after so many years of ridicule that those around her wouldn't believe in her capabilities – and so wary of men after the way they had treated her as a human – that later Mika would suppose he had deserved this reaction. "I didn't realize that in being your assistant I would eventually _owe you_ something."

"Arra, it isn't –"

"Is everything alright?" said a voice from above, and Mika looked up to see Crepsley looming, lanky and ginger as ever, awkwardly over their discussion. Mika couldn't miss the way he lay a hand absently on Arra's back like a disgusting claim to ownership. Before Mika could tell him to mind his own business and leave them to their discussions, Arra had risen to her feet, brushing off both Larten's hand on her back and her mentor's desperate grab for her wrist.

"No," said Arra, as she edged out of her seat. "It's not alright. Larten, tell Gavner we can leave tomorrow night, when you see him?"

With that, Mika watched his beloved assistant – so proud, so strong – storm out of the Hall towards her chambers. The Crepsley child didn't bother lingering to find out what had happened from the dark-haired General, but rather predictably spun to follow Arra, tripping along behind her as she gracefully swept through the doors, much like a needy orange puppy.

Mika couldn't bring himself to think of any more insults for the younger man. It wasn't important any longer to him what Arra saw in that wastrel. What mattered was that perhaps he had lost her forever, not who he had perhaps lost her to.


End file.
